from the Y-CAN'T-MESNARD-LEGISLATE? dept

When something's broken, you fix it. You don't make it worse.

Arizona's "revenge porn" law is bad. So bad it was challenged by the ACLU -- along with a number of journalistic entities -- who pointed out the overbroad wording would make all sorts of free speech criminal. Like publishing photos of the atrocities committed on naked prisoners at Abu Gharib. Or pictures of women breastfeeding. Or a sexual assault victim showing nude pictures of her assaulter to friends or family.

And they [law opponents, including the ACLU and the Media Coalition] want it to apply only to someone who was in an intimate relationship and displays a photo that their partner expected would be private with the intent to embarrass, harass or otherwise harm the person.

Mesnard said that language would be a deal-breaker because of the need to prove intent to harm, which he said would create "a big old loophole."

"I'm definitely hesitant to go down that road because it will in my view make the law nearly meaningless," he said. "Because someone could say `I thought it was funny, I didn't mean to cause harm, I was proud of my ex-girlfriend and the way she looks.' They can come up with all sorts of excuses, and suddenly the very same action which in one circumstance is a crime in another circumstance isn't."

Mesnard wants to divorce criminal activity from criminal intent. He wants a law that makes the accused immediately guilty. Not only did he strip more free speech protections from his law, but he's trying to make eye-of-the-beholder the legal standard for revenge porn cases.

Intent is important. It's what separates murder from homicide. It's what separates security researchers and bug hunters from cybercriminals. It's what keeps every offhand, stupid remark on social media from being punishable as a "true threat." Or, that's the way it should be. The government -- at all levels -- seemingly has very little interest in determining intent. It's more comfortable in criminalizing non-criminal activity than fulfilling its obligations as a prosecutorial force.

Mesnard is no different. It's "hard" to prove intent so let's just write a law that doesn't require any additional thought or legwork. Guilty until proven guilty.

A court tells Mesnard his law is bad and must be fixed. And Mesnard makes it even worse. "Revenge porn is bad," he explains. Someone needs to do Mesnard a favor and put down his crippled hobby horse. The only upside here is that there's no way the court is going to find this version any better than the one it rejected a few months ago. And if he and his fellow legislators can't actually fix it, hopefully it will be overturned. But Mesnard remains an eternal optimist, despite being unable to compose a constitutional law.

"I'm confident that we'll come up with something that will be even clearer and cleaner that what we came up with last year and something that even if the ACLU continues to challenge in court will be upheld," Mesnard said.

Maybe he could start by asking the ACLU how this should be written. As the article points out, 13 other states have implemented "revenge porn" laws, but only Mesnard's have been challenged by the ACLU. It is possible to write a narrowly-crafted law that will survive legal challenges, but Mesnard is clearly uninterested in doing this. He's hoping to just muscle his free speech-threatening law past challengers and the court itself. Mesnard may view himself as tenacious, but if he continues to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, he'll find another, much less flattering term being applied.

from the going-after-bad-people-with-worse-laws dept

Arizona's revenge porn law is one (of many) hamfisted attempts to address a specific problem with an overbroad solution. Its supporters' zealousness to stamp out revenge porn left footprints all over the First Amendment, turning something as innocuous as an ill-advised retweet into a crime on par with domestic violence.

The law contains no exception for "newsworthy disclosures" and requires "explicit permission" for any posting of images, etc. of a "person in a state of nudity or engaged in specific sexual activities." While this law would have made revenge porn illegal, it also made plenty of protected speech a criminal act.

The ACLU challenged the legislation, providing a list of non-revenge-porn speech that would be considered criminal under the new law.

A college professor in Arizona, giving a lecture on the history of the Vietnam War, projects on a screen the iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, "Napalm Girl," which shows a girl, unclothed, running in horror from her village.

A newspaper and magazine vendor in Arizona offering to sell a magazine which contains images of the abuse of unclothed prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

An educator in Arizona using images, taken from the Internet, of breast-feeding mothers, in an education program for pregnant women.

A library in Arizona providing computers with Internet access to its patrons and, because no filters could effectively prevent this result, the library patrons are able to access nude or sexual images.

A mother in Arizona sharing with her sister, in the privacy of her home, a nude image of her infant child.

A sexual assault victim in Arizona showing a photograph of the naked assaulter to her mother.

The order from U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton came as part of an agreement between the Arizona attorney general's office and the groups that sued. The order blocks enforcement of the law to allow the Legislature time to work on changes.

Those objecting to the law include not only expected civil liberties defenders like the ACLU, but also several bookstores, publishing associations and the National Press Photographers Association. The legislator behind the bill, J.D. Mesnard, says he'll work on it but can't promise he'll make opponents happy.

"Given my willingness to do that, it made sense to say, well let's see if we can get an agreement to hold off on the bill for now and make some changes in the next session," Mesnard said. "We may end up right back where we are now because some of the issues the ACLU brought up, I don't think they'll ever be satisfied."

In short, the Constitution will continue to be violated because the ACLU (and others) want too much free speech. This doesn't sound like someone willing to accept the fact that the law is badly and broadly written, but more like someone who thinks the ACLU's demands are impossible to satisfy. It also doesn't sound like someone who's interested in scrapping a law simply because the federal government has stepped in and basically declared it unconstitutional.

We can probably expect another showdown after Mesnard and his fellow legislators make a few token concessions. However, if it remains largely unchanged, Mesnard may find himself with no revenge porn law at all. The groups behind this legal challenge have vowed to seek a permanent injunction if there isn't a significant overhaul.

As has been pointed out before, revenge porn can often be tackled with existing laws. The process can be cumbersome, but the solution shouldn't be the crafting of broadly-written, unconstitutional legislation to address a specific issue -- legislation that will criminalize protected speech if allowed to proceed unchallenged.

from the good-for-them dept

Back in May we wrote about a problematic new anti-revenge porn law in Arizona. As we've been detailing for a while, revenge porn is a horrible thing, done by disgusting people, but we're quite reasonably worried about many of the legal attempts to "deal" with it, because they're often overly broad, or create other problematic consequences. The Arizona law was immensely troubling in that it appeared to punish First Amendment protected activities, and turning them into a "sexual offense" that was considered on par with domestic violence in the law. Even posting something for a journalistic purpose could be considered a felony offense. We had trouble seeing how it could possibly be Constitutional.

A college professor in Arizona, giving a lecture on the history of the Vietnam War, projects on a screen the iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, "Napalm Girl," which shows a girl, unclothed, running in horror from her village.

A newspaper and magazine vendor in Arizona offering to sell a magazine which contains images of the abuse of unclothed prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

An educator in Arizona using images, taken from the Internet, of breast-feeding mothers, in an education program for pregnant women.

A library in Arizona providing computers with Internet access to its patrons and, because no filters could effectively prevent this result, the library patrons are able to access nude or sexual images.

A mother in Arizona sharing with her sister, in the privacy of her home, a nude image of her infant child.

A sexual assault victim in Arizona showing a photograph of the naked assaulter to her mother.

Note that none of those, even remotely, resemble "revenge porn." And that's a big part of the problem. Criminalizing speech is always going to create problems. In this case, the ACLU has signed up a large bunch of clients, including book sellers, newspapers, photographers and more. The full filing is well worth reading. It points out the simple fact that this law goes way too far:

The Act, however, is vastly overbroad in its reach. It is not limited to
disclosures motivated by revenge; in fact, the motive of the person making the disclosure
is irrelevant under the law. Nor is the law limited to pornography or obscene images.
And the Act is not limited to digital speech: It equally criminalizes posting another’s
private photograph on a widely-accessed Internet site, showing a printed image to one
friend, publishing a newsworthy picture in a textbook, and including a nude photograph
in an art exhibition.

The lawsuit goes through a rather thorough explanation of just how many problems there are with the law. While some may attack this lawsuit as somehow "defending" revenge porn (just as some have attacked us in that manner for merely worrying about how broad these laws are), but that's ridiculous. A badly written and overly broad law is a problem that will be abused. That doesn't take away from the fact that revenge porn is despicable and that those who run those sites (hell, anyone who uses those sites) are self-categorizing themselves as scum of the earth. But none of that means that we should ignore the First Amendment or otherwise create laws with significant unintended consequences for all sorts of otherwise legitimate activity.

from the walk-softly-and-carry-a-ream-of-paper dept

There's probably no better way to announce that the broadband service you're providing is inadequate than the mayor of a town feeling compelled to write an apologetic letter to tourists, apologizing in advance for the lousy connection (or the complete lack of one).

As a guest in one of our wonderful Tusayan hotels, we know that like our residents, you have expectations in today's technology age of being able to easily and consistently access the internet highway during your stay in our community. Again, like our residents, we understand your frustration with the inconsistent strength of the broadband signal, or even total lack of an ability to connect. It is an issue that we have to deal with on a daily basis due to a lack of sufficient signal from our primary service broadband provider, CenturyLink. What bandwidth we have coming into the entire community has been severely over-subscribed (sold to too many users for the small signal strength available) and thus the poor quality of connectivity in our community. The situation is NOT due to a lack of effort or desire to provide you a quality service by the hotel where you are staying. It is due the lack of availability of broad bandwidth from CenturyLink.

The Town itself has been working for many months to try and resolve this situation by working with several entities to bring in a consistent and reliable service to meet not only our residents needs, but to also provide the level of service that we feel our guests and visitors to the Grand Canyon deserve. Hopefully we will be able meet those needs in the near future. Please understand that the issue is beyond our control as a whole community and not just this individual business and bear with us and we work to join the internet highway with quality services.

In the meantime, enjoy the reason you have come to our community, the Grand Canyon in all its magical and powerful beauty. We very much appreciate you choosing to stay in Tusayan and hope that you will also enjoy our great rooms, food & beverage services and the wonderful people and staff that call Tusayan their home.

Respectfully,

Greg Bryan Mayor Town of Tusayan

That CenturyLink's connection is indeed lousy has been confirmed by Grantham.

Unfortunately I can vouch that service throughout the area surrounding the national park was rather bad anywhere we went. In the national park itself service was actually pretty good, but I gather that is because the NP has it's own AT&T contract that avoids using the CenturyLink backhaul.

Grantham also wonders what purpose this letter ultimately serves: whether it's to push CenturyLink to the bargaining table, or hoping that the negative attention will draw bids from competing services. Either way, there's no shaming quite like public shaming, and CenturyLink is getting its shaming from the top man in town.

Mayor Greg Bryan said he was not encouraged by his own findings. Using his business, the Best Western Squire Inn, as an example, he said conversations with Qwest regarding Internet expansion began nine or ten months ago. In order to provide fiber optics in town, Qwest said they would need around $1,000,000.

More details from that council meeting indicate that Qwest/CenturyLink was looking for a 10-year commitment for a certain number of Tusayan businesses before it would move forward with expanding its capacity -- on top of the $1,000,000 investment from the city itself. Mayor Bryan said that Qwest was refusing to move forward until it received more service renewals for Tusayan businesses.

Further notes from later council meetings indicate CenturyLink has been unwilling to budge from either its long contracts or $1 million in funding from the town.

Robbie Evans, Tusayan Fire District, suggested that the Council look into the Arizona Corporation Services in reference to CenturyLink providing the town with broadband service. CenturyLink is supposed to be serving the town with internet and the Arizona Corporation Services can be contacted if CenturyLink does not.

CenturyLink is unresponsive to a solution as it is costly to install. There is current legislation that would allow ADOT to lay conduit along highways or allow vendors to lay conduit in the right away. The Town may need to lay aside money for the next several years to address this problem. Council Member Rueter would like to see fiber laid as wireless broadband would only address the problem temporarily as the need for use increases.

To that end, it appears the city has now abandoned hope of working this out with CenturyLink and is seeking bids on fiber optic lines. While considerably more expensive (this 2013 meeting's minutes contain a quote from NI Solutions of $1.7 million), this may finally give the town a connection that won't disappoint incoming tourists and, at least at this point, doesn't seem to come bundled with a demand for a 10-year contract with a single provider. (NI provides "open-access" fiber connections which can be utilized by any service provider.)

On the other hand, the situation doesn't seem to have progressed much past the estimate stage. Mayor Bryan's letter indicates things are still at a standstill with CenturyLink, and no competitor has offered to take over the territory. Bryan's shaming letter also indicates that CenturyLink's purchase of Qwest didn't improve local service, despite earlier hopeful comments that the new providers were "more attuned to help[ing] rural Arizona areas." This lack of movement possibly suggests that no bids are in the range the town is willing to spend, or it could be that CenturyLink is actively blocking competitors from receiving additional federal funding, something it has done in the past. Bryan's move, however, is a smart one (if not a little self-interested -- he owns a hotel in town): put more eyeballs -- especially those of people who drive the town's economy -- on the problem.

Was Blog for Arizona out of line for outing John Huppenthal as an anonymous commenter, as Mr. Geigner suggests in his recent post?

In this specific case, absolutely not. Among other things, Huppenthal invited us to publish his comments; he was so careless that his identity could be ascertained from the comments themselves, with no reference to the IP addresses we had, and he was posting from a government agency, which would be required to divulge the sites he visited if asked.

Let's put all that aside and approach the more fundamental question: How secure should a John Huppenthal be in his anonymity? He cited the Founding Fathers, several of who wrote anonymously when penning the Federalist Papers.

But the issue here is not the right to anonymous speech. Nobody disputes that right. The issue is whether there is a right to anonymous speech with zero risk of being exposed, even if the speaker is a public figure.

In our judicial system, very few rights are absolute. Why? Because there are competing interests.

For example, public figures do not receive the same level of protection from defamatory statements as ordinary citizens do. If I publish an unfavorable statement against Joe Sixpack, Joe only need show the statement was false in a suit for defamation. But if I make the same statement about an elected official, he has to show not only that the statement was false, but that I made it with reckless disregard for the truth. Why the difference? Because of the competing interest. As a society we don't want people with information about public figures to be overly fearful of coming forward.

If we were to attempt absolute protection of the anonymity of public figures in their online comments, we necessarily would have to encroach upon the freedom of the press and the associated protection of confidentiality of sources. Suppose Blog for Arizona did not expose Huppenthal directly, but instead had one of our writers speak off the record to a reporter, who then called Huppenthal out based on a confidential source and asked Huppenthal to request that Blog for Arizona publicize all its information. Huppenthal would have no practical choice but to comply, or just fess up. So, unless we're willing to encroach upon the freedom of the press, the protection of anonymous commenters could not be complete to the degree Mr. Geigner desires.

Now, consider the issue from the perspective of the blogger. I have knowledge that an elected official who is up for re-election, John Huppenthal, is a racist who believes the Holocaust was more the work of Darwin than of Hitler. Should I have no ability to let the public know what Huppenthal is all about? Perhaps, but only if Blog for Arizona and I had guaranteed Mr. Huppenthal that his anonymity would be protected. Otherwise, imposing some sort of legal gag order on bloggers does not seem the way to go.

The bottom line: We don't need to make it any easier for creeps like John Huppenthal to go undetected. A risk of detection is inherent in anonymous speech. Whatever chilling effect arises from the outing of a Huppenthal, a chilling effect that I submit is minor or non-existent, is outweighed by the value to the public of the outing.

from the nobody-to-defend dept

While we've talked in the past about whether or not a blog or publication should out a previously anonymous commenter if the outting would be newsworthy, it's worth noting that there was no real consensus reached amongst the venerated Techdirt community. Some of us think that there might be room for such a move. Others, such as myself, take more of a hard line approach to protecting anonymity (see the comments section in the link above for what I'd say is a really nice discussion on the question). Either way, with the widespread blogosphere and public participation in online communities only ratcheting ever-higher, it's useful to bring stories to the table to discuss how this all works when such events do occur.

This latest example is about John Huppenthal, Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction and apparent frequent anonymous commenter at Blog For Arizona. Bob Lord, of BFA, recently penned a post that outs Huppenthal for his previously anonymous and simultaneously insane comments on the site.

Okay, for the few of you who have not figured this out yet, by all indication our friend Thucky is John Huppenthal, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, which is the fifth highest elected office in the state. This may be a first. I don't know of any other elected official who has led a double life as a serial blog troll besides John Huppenthal. Chalk that up to Arizona having the market cornered on political craziness, I guess.

The post then outs Huppenthal for commenting anonymously there, on other conservative sites, and for creating duplicate handles all over the place in order to fake some kind of consensus around what he says. And what he was saying, analysis indicates, is batshit crazy. Such as:

-"bat shit crazy stuff"!!! Its in Obamas book, Obama said he was born in Kenya!!!! If this were a Republican, you would be going nuts demanding those college records.

-Hitler worked to eliminate the Jews. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood was given the job of eliminating African Americans. Hitler fed 6 million Jews into the ovens. Sanger has fed 16 million African Americans into the abortion mills.

-No spanish radio stations, no spanish billboards, no spanish tv, no spanish newspapers. This is America, speak English.

Now, it's worth noting that Huppenthal has since acknowledged that he did indeed make those comments under several different names, speaking of and to himself in the third person. That acknowledgement was followed up with something about believing in public discourse, regretting certain inflammatory words (Hitler! Kenya!), but hoping that we should all recognize that our great country has a long history of anonymous speech from politicians.

And...I happen to think he's right on that last point. Look, Huppenthal is a blowhard, fact-ignoring caricature of a politician on one end of the political spectrum. He's not representative of anything other than his own idiocy, but the sites he went to offered anonymous commenting and then pulled the rug out from under him when they decided that his commenting was a story. They're not wrong; Huppenthal's online antics and self-sock-puppetry is indeed a story, but does that story outweigh the fallout from the removal of anonymity? I would say no. Others, including other writers here at Techdirt, might say yes. I'm more interested in what you all think, anonymous or otherwise.

from the a-brand-new-set-of-exploits dept

"Revenge porn" laws are universallybadly and broadly written, prone to all sorts of unintended consequences that will punish First Amendment-protected speech with increasingly harsh sentences. Arizona's new "revenge porn" law equates the offense with domestic violence, filing under Chapter 14 of state law ("Sexual Offenses").

This law has the potential to create a new, ultra-nefarious level of "revenge porn trolling" by entities with the same moral turpitude as Prenda and Malibu Media, both of which have actively explored the outer limits of copyright law in their extortionate efforts. Arizona's new "revenge porn" law gives these sorts of entities a new form of leverage to use against unwary infringers.

The law contains wording that would implicate anyone who "intentionally discloses, displays, distributes, publishes, advertises or offers" any form of media depicting sexual activity or nudity "if the person knows or should have known that the depicted person has not consented to the disclosure."

By definition, copyright infringement is "disclosing without consent." You can't infringe if you have permission.

True, there is an exception that excludes "images involving voluntary exposure in a public or commercial setting." This would seem to exclude professional pornography, but that would also seem to be outweighed by the "consent" referenced in the law's opening paragraph.

This potentially creates a loophole for porn producers (or rather, their legal representation) to pursue the non-consensual republication of their content.

What would be scarier for the non-aware infringer to receive? A demand letter referencing potential infringement damages or a demand letter referencing potential felony charges for sexual offenses?

It wouldn't take much to set up a honeypot. Just a few amateurish-looking shots and maybe a quick and dirty site with a revenge porn-ish look. With even less effort, photos and video could be scattered across the web containing faux contact info -- anything to make them look like the sort of thing the bill targets. And if the info comes out that a law firm/porn producer was behind the content, they can always fall back on copyright.

Even without a honeypot, there's still the question of consent. If Arizonan X post infringing pics and video to his tumblr, he is definitely circumventing the depicted person(s) "consent." The law only specifies that the posting person "knows or should have known" that the depicted person did not consent to this "disclosure." Consent given to a porn producer is not consent given to the public for distribution.

Granted, criminal prosecution won't result in monetary reward for trolls, but trolling endgame has never been the courtroom. The judicial system is the last resort. The real money is in demand letters, and Arizona's new bill will give them plenty of legal threats to use.

[Side note: this doesn't even address what the law does -- in fact, what all these laws do -- to the tangled legalities of amateur porn. If consenting adults post consensual images and video of their sexual activities, what happens when one of the parties revokes consent after the fact? Does this make the posted material instantly illegal? There's no wording in Arizona's law that addresses this form of consent (that language was dropped, along with wording about newsworthy postings). Professional porn would have explicit language dealing with consent, but amateur efforts would obviously be devoid of contractual stipulations.

No doubt advocates of this law would consider the revocation of consent by one party to be sufficient enough for prosecution, but this should make anyone in the affected states wary about engaging in recorded sexual activities -- even more so than "revenge porn" itself does.]

from the 'solving'-a-problem-by-creating-new-problems dept

[Update to the update: when writing this post, I misread Chapter 14 of Arizona's laws to mean that a sexual offense of this nature (revenge porn) would require registration as a sex offender. Not everything listed under "Sexual Offenses" is punishable in this fashion (which includes bestiality, inappropriate contact with a minor, violent sexual assault, etc.) and as Amanda Levendowski (whose post on the law is quoted below) pointed out on Twitter, the law equates revenge porn with domestic violence, which is not an offense requiring registration. My sincerest apologies to everyone for my error. -- Tim Cushing]

Updates have been added to the post to clarify that those found guilty under this law don't end up on the sexual offenders list -- instead the crime is considered the equivalent of "domestic violence."

Another revenge porn law has just gone into effect. This time it's Arizona seeking to create a new brand of criminal already covered by existing laws. But Arizona's law does make an effort to be the worst of the worst, what with its removal of wording related to "newsworthy disclosure" and the addition of violators to the state's sex offender registry making it sexual offense on par with domestic violence (Update: earlier reports saying that it required you to be put on the sex offender's list are incorrect).

Those jokes about retweeting US Airways' model-plane-as-'marital-aid' gaffe from a few weeks back putting certain states' residents on the wrong side of newly-minted revenge porn laws aren't really jokes. Or, at least, they're the kind of "funny" that kills off your amusement in mid-laugh. The wording of Arizona's law would (much like New Jersey's) make violators out of every Arizonan who passed that photo along, as New York defense lawyer Scott Greenfield points out.

Do you have personal knowledge that the woman in the US Airways tweet consented to your distribution of her image on twitter? But you did know she was in a state of nudity, right? And you did it anyway, right? And while it may have been “newsworthy” (or at least lulzworthy) that US Airways made this huge gaffe, there is no rational nexis between a corporate screw up and a woman’s right not to have her nude landing field spewed across the interwebz, right?

Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona: Section 1. Title 13, chapter 14, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding section 13-1425, to read: 13-1425. Unlawful distribution of images; state of nudity; classification; definitions.

A. IT IS UNLAWFUL TO INTENTIONALLY DISCLOSE, DISPLAY, DISTRIBUTE, PUBLISH, ADVERTISE OR OFFER A PHOTOGRAPH, VIDEOTAPE, FILM OR DIGITAL RECORDING OF ANOTHER PERSON IN A STATE OF NUDITY OR ENGAGED IN SPECIFIC SEXUAL ACTIVITIES IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT THE DEPICTED PERSON HAS NOT CONSENTED TO THE DISCLOSURE.

B. THIS SECTION DOES NOT APPLY TO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:

1. LAWFUL AND COMMON PRACTICES OF LAW ENFORCEMENT, REPORTING UNLAWFUL ACTIVITY, OR WHEN PERMITTED OR REQUIRED BY LAW OR RULE IN LEGAL PROCEEDINGS. 2. LAWFUL AND COMMON PRACTICES OF MEDICAL TREATMENT. 3. IMAGES INVOLVING VOLUNTARY EXPOSURE IN A PUBLIC OR COMMERCIAL SETTING. 4. AN INTERACTIVE COMPUTER SERVICE, AS DEFINED IN 47 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 230(f)(2), OR AN INFORMATION SERVICE, AS DEFINED IN 47 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 153, WITH REGARD TO CONTENT PROVIDED BY ANOTHER PERSON.

C. A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION IS A CLASS 5 FELONY, EXCEPT THAT A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION IS A CLASS 4 FELONY IF THE DEPICTED PERSON IS RECOGNIZABLE.

D. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS SECTION, "STATE OF NUDITY" AND "SPECIFIC SEXUAL ACTIVITIES" HAVE THE SAME MEANINGS PRESCRIBED IN SECTION 11-811.

Section 14 is Arizona's catchall for sexual offenses, which pushes this law past the usual expansions of stalking or harassment laws and puts violators on the state's sex offender registries and makes an offense the equivalent of a "domestic violence" offense. This is what happens when legislators mistake themselves for crusaders. Constitutionally-protected speech takes the hit while witches get burned.

But isn’t it unconstitutional, since “[t]he Supreme Court has held that offensive, embarrassing, disgusting, and even false speech warrant protection under the First Amendment”? Lawprof Danielle Citron debunks the “myth” (even though Citron doesn’t go as far as [Mary Anne] Franks in her zeal to get the evil men at any cost [see footnote 45]) because revenge porn is special, unlike the crush videos rejected in Stevens, by reasoning that aspires to sophistry.) But since revenge porn is so evil, it isn’t subject to logic that would otherwise apply, so we can blindly leap over logical gaps in a single bound. Constitution, gone. Well, at least non-lawyer fans see no problem dismissing it.

Beyond the fact that the bill criminalizes First Amendment activity, and beyond the fact that it makes it a criminal offense to post newsworthy/notable photos as part of a journalistic endeavor, there's the all-encompassing language at the beginning of the law that will (if given over to zealous interpretation -- and what part of this bill isn't marked by zealotry?) make sex offenders out of people who've never posted a nude pic in their life. Amanda Levendowski's writeup of Arizona's new law purposefully excludes links to supporting informationspecifically because of the law's first paragraph.

The law could apply to the snaps of Anthony Weiner’s dangerzone that he didn’t publicly tweet (which Buzzfeed included in its July 25, 2013 story). Or US Airway’s gaff-tweet of a woman’s landing strip* and the subsequent sharing of the image (as HuffPo did in its story about the tweet on April 14, 2014), which is the very issue I blogged about last week.

I’m intentionally NOT linking to these sites: It doesn’t look like the statute defines disclosure, and who knows what a determined prosecutor might interpret “distribution” to mean.

People who intentionally post "revenge porn" are inveterate assholes, but their actions hardly fit under a sexual offender law. And there are plenty of existing laws that tackle what they do. (Most revenge porn sites seem to be run by people who have no problem with breaking other laws as well.) People who inadvertently wander into the oncoming path of the DO SOMETHING Express aren't criminals in any sense of the word. But a whole lot of other complications (including limited/no employment) await Arizonans who post the wrong picture online. About the only positive in the bill is that it doesn't screw with Section 230 protections.

Just because the activity depicted can be described as "sexual" does not make this a sexual offense on the order of domestic violence. It's more closely aligned with harassment/stalking and should have stayed that way. This law will be abused. There can be no question about that. Revenge porn aficionados shouldn't walk away unscathed, but First Amendment-protected activity shouldn't be steamrolled simply to make the path to shutting down revenge porn as smooth as possible.

A fired executive from a national red-light camera vendor claimed in an Arizona lawsuit that the company provided lavish gifts and bribes to government officials in 13 states to secure new contracts.

The New Jersey Star-Ledger reported Saturday that the bombshell allegations made a 13-page counterclaim by Aaron Rosenberg, former nationwide lead salesman for Redflex Traffic Systems of Phoenix, claimed that the firm “bestowed gifts and bribes on … officials in dozens of municipalities within, but not limited to the following states: California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Florida, New Jersey, Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia.”

Rosenberg claimed Redflex bribed local officials with meals, golf outings and tickets to professional football and baseball games, calling the expenses “entertainment” or “celebratory tokens.”

“Redflex was fired in Chicago for corruption. Nobody gets fired for corruption in Chicago,” said Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), an outspoken critic of the cameras in New Jersey, who called for an investigation.

(Chicagoans should note that the contractor being considered for new speed cams, Xerox State and Local Solutions, is technically no better, albeit less tainted by outright corruption. Xerox's cameras in Baltimore had a 10-26% error rate when audited, meaning the contractor issued up to 70,000 erroneous tickets in 2012 alone.)

Redflex has, of course, denied this and vows to "aggressively defend" itself against these claims. But this latest claim won't do much to salvage its almost completely destroyed reputation. Redflex isn't alone in its troubles. Contractors and camera systems are facing intense backlash across the nation, especially as evidence of faulty cameras, backroom deals and general incompetence continues to surface.

The accusations against Redflex can hardly be considered a surprise, considering the symbiotic relationship between contractors and city governments that tends to form when a new source of revenue is spotted. As long as the cameras issue tickets and the tickets continue to be paid, no one involved at the city level has much reason to examine the inner workings very closely. And if they've been plied by tickets to sporting events and rounds of golf, it makes it that much easier to drown out the complaints of constituents.

from the oh-really-now? dept

As anyone who followed the SOPA fight remembers, GoDaddy was an early (and vocal) supporter of SOPA. This was mainly the work of its General Counsel, Christine Jones, who (prior to SOPA specifically being released) testified before Congress in support of a law sounding very much like SOPA (supporting making search engines, service providers, credit card companies and others liable). When SOPA was released, she wrote an op-ed strongly in favor of it for Politico (who appear to have made it disappear), calling the bill "a welcome step in the right direction." She did this even though -- under the bill's initial definition -- GoDaddy itself was clearly "dedicated to theft of property."

As you probably remember, the internet backlash was strong, and GoDaddy had to drop its support, giving the company a major black eye. Since then, a very large percentage of the management team has changed, including Jones, who left the company a few months after SOPA collapsed.

Christine made it a priority to establish Go Daddy as a leader in the fight to make the Internet better and safer for users, particularly children. She has testified numerous times before U.S. Congressional Committees in Washington, D.C. about various issues related to the Internet. She also helped drive federal Internet-related legislation, including laws to keep the Web safe from child predators and rogue online pharmacies. For example, she helped push through bills such as the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act, the Protect Our Children Act, and the Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act. These bills were signed into law by President Bush in October 2008 and have been used by law enforcement and others to shut down illegal online drug sellers and to prosecute online child predators.

Nothing about SOPA, you see. But she does highlight these kinds of grandstanding laws that have great titles that sound like they're trying to make the internet safer from evil things like fake drugs and sexual predators. In reality, most of these bills have done nothing particularly useful. That's because they were all about getting headlines so politicians could claim they were doing something about some "big problem" without tackling the actual underlying problems. In some cases, they have serious problems. The "Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators" made all registered sex offenders register their emails in a weak attempt to keep them off of social networks (even when the "offenders" did not have a history of being predators or anything like that).

These are the kinds of bills that someone supports because they want more political cred, not because they have any interest in actually solving real problems. Either way, it just seems really wrong for a person who was heavily involved in supporting SOPA in the early days to now be running for political office arguing that she was focused on making the internet "a better place."